1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to automatic analysis of individual preferences for other humans based on what they look like, for example as may be used in a machine learning system to develop personalized filters for individuals to be used in selecting candidate matches for those individuals.
2. Description of the Related Art
The study of human attractiveness brings together questions of aesthetics, emotion, biology, and computation. Evolutionary psychology points to three major characteristics that contribute to attractiveness cross-culturally for both genders: symmetry, averageness, and non-average sexual dimorphic features. Although there are some traits that are generally recognized, for example, a symmetric face is more attractive than a non-symmetric one, it is rather difficult to quantify the importance and relevance of each of the above characteristics in determining whether a human is attractive or not.
In addition, attractiveness is a personalized concept. As the old saying goes, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” One person may find some person particularly attractive, while others may have a different opinion about the same person. For example, one person may find the person attractive because of his blue eyes, while others may find his blue eyes off-putting. Alternately, different people may find a particular person attractive, but for completely different reasons. For example, some people may find that person's eyes attractive, while other people may find that person's mouth attractive. It is difficult to generalize what one person finds attractive to predictions of how other people may perceive the same subject.
In the era of modern communication, dating and other forms of match making have become an online activity in addition to the traditional offline activity. There are many internet dating websites that facilitate people's dating needs. Typically, these internet dating websites contain thousands or more user profiles from which people may choose potential dates. However, people generally date other people whom they find attractive but attractiveness varies from one person to the next. This creates a problem: how to effectively find potential dates for a given user?
Traditionally, written questionnaires are used as filters to find potential dates. For example, a user of an internet dating website provides a list of requirements for a potential date, such as the preferred age, height, weight, education, location, etc. The internet dating website then uses this list of requirements to find potential matches in other users' profiles. However, this approach has a significant drawback, in that much of the information which people use to find potential dates is non-verbal. For example, a lot of non-verbal information is contained in a person's picture. The appearance of the person's face, the person's facial expression, the person's attire, and even the background in which the person appears can play important roles in determining whether the person in the picture is considered attractive or not. However, this non-verbal information can be difficult to communicate in a written questionnaire.
Thus, there is a need for improved techniques to process non-verbal information, such as a person's picture, for example to facilitate the task of finding potential matches for people.